Added 01:01:2003 / Updated 01:21:2003
4.8 Can Scribus run on KDE - Cygwin and Windows 2000?
Disclaimer: This is in the "just for fun" category.
The short answer is yes; not perfectly - and - there is hope for the future.
Actually, Scribus 0.6 stable (the last QT 2 version) compiles uneventfully on KDE 2.2.2 and Cygwin QT 2.3.0 with gcc 2.95.3. ( I have not had the time to try it under the newer gcc 3.2) It is interesting as a proof of concept, but there is, I suspect, some unfinished coding in KDE - Cygwin left to make Scribus really usable day to day on Windows 2000 or XP.
That said, Scribus actually runs rather stable without memory leaks or unusual crashes, given the ported QT and KDE 2.2.2 sources are described as beta. I just think the idea of being able to run KDE apps natively as the default desktop on Windows 2000/XP is a really cool idea. Right now there is a small group working on the internals of Cygwin KDE 3 and the free version of QT at: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/ I sense there real end goal is to provide a mechanism to port KDE apps to run on native Windows 2000/XP. This post to the mailing list, explains how someone replaced their whole Windows 2000 desktop with KDE 2.2.2 and Cygwin.
Hints/Results:
- I have created new files, opened up several test files with large images, as well as long text blocks - edited and resaved, as well as applied templates and many of the usual editing tasks. All of these could be opened later on under Linux without problems.
- KDE itself takes a long time to load about 90 seconds from launch. I have not tried Scribus with other window managers.
- The best way to install Scribus is to install the latest Cygwin binaries with all the development libraries, install KDE-Cygwin *exactly* per the instructions on the web site and then compile Scribus.
- To compile QT or KDE apps successfully, Cygwin needs to have the patched binutils from KDE-Cygwin, not the standard one installed by Cygwin.
- The patched binutils - I suspect - have some bugs which do not properly link in parts of Scribus code which are QT plug-ins and/or support libraries on which Scribus relies on. (Printing or exporting PDF's does not yet work).
- You need lots of memory - I would not even try this on a workstation with less than 512 Mb of memory and at least a 500 MHZ processor. Compiling and linking Scribus took over 120 mb alone.
- I have tried a couple of times to compile 0.7.x versions which are QT3 based. Compiling went just like on Linux, but failed in the very last phase of linking in the support libraries. Again, I suspect some work needs to be done in the patched linker for KDE-Cygwin or some unfinished coding in the ported QT 3 source.
That Scribus can actually run is a great credit to the KDE-Cygwin team for making it work so well in such a short time since this project was launched, QT, which has done a remarkably good job of separating platform dependent code, as well as the KDE-Cygwin team for taking on the task of porting the main QT and KDE libraries. Moreover, recently work has begun to provide a layer of Win32 compatibility to the GPL QT source. This would be a substantial performance improvement, as it eliminates needing the Cygwin posix layer to run QT/KDE applications.
What would be required to required to have Scribus really running well on Win32? Probably not a tremendous amount of work, mostly X11 functions to Win32 windowing functions and some work on accessing fonts and printing. Scribus has very little platform dependent code, except for X11 libs. A cool project for someone with the right skills...
More to follow....